I AM CAUGHT BEHIND THE FORMER IRON CURTAIN, AND MY POSTS CAN'T GET OUT.

I'LL TRY AGAIN NEXT WEEK FROM FRANCE.

SORRY 'BOUT THAT

Are People Really That Stupid?Fortunately, the answer to the above question is usually "No." However, people do enough fairly-stupid to seriously-stupid things to keep the rest of us entertained most of the time. Unfortunately, the human race is in the middle of doing a couple of really stupid things that may result in wiping ourselves off the face of the planet. Given this scenario, the blogger might be forgiven if the subjects he covers range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Feel free to join in. Maybe you'll say something smart.

In a family with two children, there will always be a certain amount of sibling rivalry. However, if one of the parents takes the side of one of the children, that rivalry will escalate. The worst possible situation is if one parent favours one child, and the other parent supports the other. Why?

1.Each child will feel justified in continuing the fight, because the support from the parent increases the chance of victory.

2.Both children look to their parents for guidance, and they are being shown that fighting is the way people live with each other.

3.It is a guarantee that the parents are having power problems themselves, and are using the children as pawns in their game. The people responsible for the battle have no motivation to stop the children from their destructive behaviour.

Blame it on Colonialism

The colonial powers in the past couple or three hundred years created this kind of problem all over the globe. They arbitrarily divided up the land, irrespective of old tribal boundaries that kept different peoples apart. As long as the colonial army kept the peace, this seemed to work. It was only in the twentieth century that independence from the colonial rulers set these tribes battling against each other for control of the country.

Break 'em Up Again?

The temptation is to solve the problem by redrawing the old tribal boundaries. Unfortunately, human migratory tendencies being what they are, that is no longer possible.

In fact, one of the favourite policies of colonial powers, if they found a piece of real estate they really wanted, was to emigrate enough of their own people into the area that, when “freedom” eventually came, the ethnic group who had originally owned the country could be overwhelmed at the ballot box in fine democratic style. The British flooded North America with their people, overwhelming the original nations (and the French who had tried to inundate Canada first).

Germans have been settling in Poland and Western Russia for the past 300 years. The Dutch and British each had their try at flooding South Africa, neither successful. And the Russians, whose major international objective since the time of the tsars has been to own a warm-water port, have flooded Crimea with their citizens since the 1930s.

And, like parents who are battling, each of these powers has, at some time, used the protection of “their” citizens as an excuse to try to influence the internal politics of its neighbor. Hitler used it as his excuse for annexing part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Since 2008, Russia has been giving out Russian passports to citizens of Crimea. I wonder why?

Balkanization

One place where the re-drawing of boundaries was attempted was the Balkans. The boundaries of that area were redrawn at least three times in the twentieth century, and the people there are still suffering the effects. In fact the term “Balkanization” is now used to describe the process, and it is not usually a positive concept.

Partition, especially in circumstances like this, creates a couple of problems. What happened in the Balkans was a perfect example. Remember the warring parents? Of course, the boundary decisions were made to please the outside powers, not the needs of the local people. No wonder they didn’t work. In fact, the dividing of territory, like Solomon’s solution to the sharing of the child, is mostly for the good of the outside powers, and never fun for the subject of the partition.

And secondly, this kind of breakdown of authority leaves a power vacuum, into which the thugs, the criminals, the racists, and other organized power cadres are happy to jump. The images coming out of Crimea these days are full of “checkpoints” held by masked men whose only authority is the AK-47 they carry, while most of the decent citizens stay home and pray for peace.

I make the assumption that, while it takes a rather special person to take over a whole country – Stalins and Hitlers are happily few and far between – the smaller the political division, the easier it is for a local warlord or crime boss to take over. The more unrest and the larger number of times the partitions occur, the more chance these people have of moving in, like bacteria attacking a break in the skin.

Migrated Populations Mix it Up

Independence only creates a new set of problems. If Quebec (francophone and rural) were to secede from Canada, then there would be agitation in Montreal (bilingual and urban) to secede from Quebec. And then what would they do with the primarily-francophone quarters of Montreal? Chop them up into ghettos (we call them reservations) like the Europeans did to the First Nations who lived in Canada? Come to think of it, there are more than a million people of Ukrainian extraction in Canada. I’m sure a bunch of them live in Quebec as well. Do they get their own state, too?

If the Ukraine gave independence to Crimea, they would have created a new country with 58% Russians, 24% Ukranians, and 12% Tatars. And those minority groups would be just as unhappy as the present Russian Crimeans are. And should they allow the Eastern Ukraine, which looks to the north politically and economically, to secede and go their Russian way as well? But there are a lot of ethnic Ukranians in that area as well. Around 60% of the population, in fact.

Breaking the country apart is not the answer. It only works to the advantage of the power junkies, inside and external. It is the opposite of the historical process that, for the last several hundred years, has allowed larger and larger groups of disparate people to live together in economic benefit and social harmony. The European Union experiment is the best modern example.

Why Choose?

The major fear that most people have in divided countries like the Ukraine is that their opponents will succeed in forging stronger ties with the outside power that supports them, and then use that strength to take power. The main bone of contention in the Ukraine now is whether to have closer ties with Europe or with Moscow. What they don’t realize is that it is not necessary to have uneven ties with either.

Canada has lived beside the United States, but closely tied to Britain, for a couple of centuries. It has never been an “either-or” situation. Canada now has various special trading agreements with the US and Mexico, with China, with the European Union, with anybody interested. And why? Probably because none of these outside powers is trying to play a group inside Canada for advantage.

People can get along with each other if there is no one messing about from outside. The reason that Americans have been so unsuccessful in their involvement in the affairs of smaller countries like Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, (and the lack of any help for Syria) is that the Americans and their allies have always taken the side of one of the combatants against the other. And the Russians (or the Chinese) have immediately jumped in and taken the part of the other side. Thus their efforts have not been truly peace-keeping, but war-provoking. As I write this, the news is full of, not what's going on in the Ukraine, but what the US and Russia are doing about it. And solving the problem seems to be the last thing on their minds.

Apply the "Who Benefits?" Rule.

Who gets the most from an independent, ethnic-Russian dominated Crimea? Game, set, and match (finally) on the warm-water port problem for Russia. I think we have found the source of the problem.

The Solution

The Ukrainians should not be fighting to see whether they will cuddle up to Russia or Europe. They should be getting together to try to figure out how to get the most help from both directions. As long as they keep thinking of themselves as “Russians,” “Ukranians,” and “Tatars,” there will be trouble. When they start thinking of themselves as “Ukranians of Russian descent,” “Ukranians of Ukranian descent,” and “Ukranians of Tatar descent,” then they have a chance to rebuild their broken country. And the rest of the world should stand aside and wish them well.

There is a point where good parents tell their children, “You solve this problem yourselves.” That’s how children learn to stop fighting each other, and grow up to become independent.

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Gordon A. Long is a semi-retired teacher living in
Delta, British Columbia. There he indulges his life-long interests in writing,
theater, photography, travel, dogs, and sailing (not necessarily in that
order).

He also runs Airborn Press and helps beginning writers with
editing, proofreading, designing, publishing and marketing their books. His
business experience includes providing technical and management services in the
theatrical and convention field for forty years, from school and amateur
theatre all the way up to the 2010 Olympics.

Has he invested in the Stock Market? Yes. Was he successful? Yes. Did he
make a killing? Not a chance. He isn't that smart. Or that stupid.